October 2011

On a chilly December day in 2009, my friend David and I crammed into a taxi and made our way through the DC streets to Capitol Hill. To say that I felt butterflies would be an understatement. We were minutes away from an appointment at Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson’s office, and I still had no idea what I was going to say.

Our aim was to ask the Senator to help introduce the Child Protection Compact Act, and I was frantically trying to come up with something persuasive to convey.

For the past two months, advocates around the country have been lobbying for Congress to pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011 (TVPRA) through our annual In-district Meeting Campaign. Since August, we've seen the introduction of the TVPRA in the House of Representatives, and 26 Members of Congress have signed on as cosponsors, joining the original two sponsors of the bill. In the Senate, 9 new cosponsors have signed on since the August in-district recess!

Your work to bring attention to this bill really makes a difference! We have been encouraged by the stories and pictures many of you have shared from your meetings, and we want to share the good work you are doing.

At last, the legislation we have been working on for almost a year, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, is getting traction in Congress!  I am happy to report that the House Foreign Affairs Committee reviewed the bill (HR.2830) day before yesterday and passed it unanimously out of the committee.  Our hats go off to Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), the principal sponsor of the TVPRA—and the author of the original TVPA, passed in 2000—who shepherded the bill through the process. 

I became an activist when I was ten. That year, inspired by an Amnesty International campaign, I wrote a Christmas card to a man being held in a Greek prison.  Connecting with this victim of oppression through a letter, the distance between me - a kid in Massachusetts - and a young man unjustly imprisoned in Greece, seemed much smaller.